


Sight Unseen

by Pemm



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-24 22:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2599169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This wasn’t how the mission was supposed to have gone. It had been a simple retrieval not far from Viaduct, and so routine that Miss Pauling had only taken Heavy, Spy, and Scout (on the condition he behave himself).</p><p>(She probably would have taken Scout anyway. Her professionalism was slipping, she’d been too caught up in stupid thoughts about stupid boys with stupid buck teeth. That was probably why she’d gotten into this mess.)</p><p>(Fuck.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sight Unseen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PreludeInZ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/gifts).



> Wasn't sure about posting this—still not even sure if I like it—but Tumblr seemed to enjoy it, and that's a good enough reason to crosspost for me.
> 
> Contents: slapdash h/c that runs on entirely too long and was encouraged by hooligans. Onward!

In the corner of the dingy room, an ugly place tucked away in a Midwestern motel that was lost to time and space as far as Scout was concerned, the fat rabbit-eared television screen snowed in silence. It must have been at least midnight. He didn’t know how long he’d been staring at it, maybe hours by now, who knew? Not him. He barely fucking knew anything. Maybe if he did they wouldn’t be here right now.

Shifting in the uncomfortable wicker chair he had been keeping his vigil in, his eyes fell once again on the still, shapeless form on the bed. The light from the television was the only thing illuminating the place, and it cast strange, unnatural shadows over the bed and what it held. It played tricks on his eyes—he wasn’t sure if she was breathing—

Before he could stop himself he had scrambled out of the chair, cursing like a sailor just under his breath. Putting one knee onto the bed, he leaned in as close as he dared, and held out his wrist to within an inch of her mouth and nose. It was slow in coming, but when warm, damp breath hit his skin Scout nearly dropped in relief. He was so tired.

He must have shifted too much. She was moving. “Shit,” he mumbled to himself, and tried to pull away only to be frozen in place when Miss Pauling spoke.

“Scout?”

It wasn’t Miss Pauling’s voice, his brain told him. Miss Pauling had a voice like a particularly stern church bell, one he liked so much he’d taken to getting himself into trouble just to be lectured by her. That had backfired spectacularly once she figured out why he was doing it, and relegated all lecturing to Soldier. The voice that had spoken his name was bleary and wavering, and it was lined with apprehension. No, no, no. “Yeah,” Scout said, “yeah, hey, it’s just me. Jesus, I thought you weren’t gonna wake up. Jesus Christ.”

She said nothing.

His eyes long since adjusted to the poor lighting, Scout could make out the way she just lay there, swallowed by blankets and staring at nothing. The silence was killing him, and he asked a selfish question: “How you feelin’?”

Her face screwed up, eyes still staring blankly ahead. Wow. What a terrible—he was awful. Just fucking awful. But before he could really start tearing into himself, she answered. “Head hurts. Where are we?”

“Somewhere—s’just a little shit motel, first place I could find.”

“Wh—where exactly?” she persisted in that tiny, birdlike voice. He hated that voice. (He didn’t, he couldn’t, it belonged to Miss Pauling after all, but he cringed every time she spoke in it.) “Is it one of the meet-up points? The team—”

“I ain’t seen nothin’ of the team,” Scout said, trying his damnedest to temper his voice. His frustration with his teammates wasn’t going to do anything to make Miss Pauling feel better. “Not since the trucks blew up. Everyone got scattered, there was too many of the bastards to fight ’em proper. I ain’t got any idea where we are even, I just kinda grabbed you and ran.”

“I don’t really remember much.”

“Yeah, I mean you uh, you hit your head pretty hard. They got you in the face with somethin’ too … your head okay?” No answer. “I uh, I mean I ain’t Medic but I patched you up best I could, I woulda called a doctor except I think they must got like all the goddamn phones tapped or something if they was waitin’ for us like that.” He sat back on the tiny excuse for a bed, looking at the flickering television again. “I hadta sneak you in ‘round the back, didn’t want anyone askin’ no questions. Figured we oughta lay low ’til you woke up.” If she woke up.

Finally, she nodded. Scout’s gaze jumped back over to her as she rolled over onto her side, gingerly and with much grimacing. “How long was I out?”

“Um, I dunno, I guess it’s prob’ly around midnight now, midnight-thirty maybe, I wasn’t really lookin’ at a clock tearin’ through the damn woods like I was. I think it was maybe around four when we got here, though, so, that’s what, that’s eight hours? Eight and a half? A long time. You–y’had me pretty goddamn worried.”

“I–oh,” Miss Pauling said, her brow wrinkling. “Oh, geez. No wonder I feel so bad. And I’m probably dehydrated on top of that.”

“You want some water?”

“Please. God, my eyes hurt.”

It was so terribly out of character to let him do anything for her. Scout darted off to the bathroom, filled one of the shady-looking paper cups with tap water (lukewarm, goddamn, but on second thought maybe that was better than too cold right now). When he returned to her he turned on the bedside lamp with a quiet click. “Here,” he said, holding it out to her. Miss Pauling hesitated, looking his way but not reaching for it. After a moment, though, she did, and her hand bumped into his. Water leapt out of the cup, splattering their wrists.

“Damn it,” he heard her mutter, and then, “Can you turn on a light?”

“I–the light’s on.”

“It–what? But it’s completely dark in … here …”

Oh. Oh no.

 

* * *

 

Miss Pauling had not moved from the bed but for the one time she’d lost the war against her body and had to have Scout help her to the bathroom. That had been three hours ago.

It was pitch dark. It remained pitch dark when she snapped at Scout to  _stop talking for just five minutes_  thirty minutes later. It was still pitch dark when, after an indeterminate amount of total silence, her frantic attempts at mental planning to cover the shock of going blind gave way to sudden fear. It was so quiet. Had Scout left? He wouldn’t, would he? “Scout?” she said for the second time that night, her own voice feeling foreign and too loud.

“Yeah?” came the immediate answer, somewhere over on her left. Muffled footsteps on thin carpet followed, and she felt the bed shake ever so little as he put his weight on it.

Suddenly she was scolding herself. Of course Scout wouldn’t have left. It was hard to get him to go even when she wanted him to.

She didn’t want him to, now, but why had she gone and done that? What was she supposed to say?  _Just checking you didn’t abandon me?_  No. Absolutely not. So instead she just said, “What time is it?”

“About, uh, about, I guess around five by now. Sun’s just startin’ to come up.”

It was still pitch dark.

 

* * *

 

It was nearly nine in the morning before Miss Pauling spoke to him again. This time she had him help her try to wash out her eyes, just in case. Didn’t do shit, that would be too easy. The whites of them were red and irritated and the water didn’t really do anything to help that.

He was dying to ask her what the plan was, but he hadn’t dared speak since she told him to shut up. It seemed like the least he could do was try to control his stupid fucking tongue, at least for a while. But when noon rolled around and she was still just lying there on the bed—she wasn’t doing  _anything_ , she wasn’t telling him the plan or what he should be doing or anything, and there  _had_  to be a plan, right? There was  _always_  a plan—he called, “Uh—hey, you hungry?”

“Not especially.”

Shit. “Okay but, uh, it’s been like, I know you ain’t had dinner or breakfast, it’s been like a day at least—”

“I know that.”

Her tone was iron bars. He fell silent, grimacing. He wasn’t any fucking good at this kind of thing, was he, hell no. “Well, I’m hungry,” he said at last. “On account’a I ain’t eaten in about a day neither. I’m gonna go find somethin’ to eat an’ I’ll bring somethin’ back for you, okay.”

At the words  _I’m gonna go_  she lifted her head, looking toward his voice, but said nothing. Scout hesitated. “I’ll be back real soon,” he promised, and left.

(Outside the door he stopped, just for a moment, and scrubbed at his eyes until he saw nothing but stars.)

 

* * *

 

This wasn’t how the mission was supposed to have gone. It had been a simple retrieval not far from Viaduct, and so routine that Miss Pauling had only taken Heavy, Spy, and Scout (on the condition he behave himself).

(She probably would have taken Scout anyway. Her professionalism was slipping, she’d been too caught up in stupid thoughts about stupid boys with stupid buck teeth. That was probably why she’d gotten into this mess.)

(Fuck.)

Miss Pauling could not have expressed exactly what had been going through her mind over the last twelve hours. She could give the gist, though—first, vicious panic; then a deceptive composure that was as much for her benefit as it was for Scout’s as she struggled to come up with a plan with only one merc, no resources, and no sight.

No sight, no sight, no sight. The last thing she could remember seeing was a burst of powder, gleaming in the spring sunlight over the highway.

Pauling’s thoughts got kind of scattered after that.

Anyway. She’d failed. Spectacularly. People were trying to kill them and they’d blinded her and she couldn’t even wrestle her thoughts together enough to form a plan and the only person she had to rely on was  _Scout_ , and she was an  _idiot_  and she’d snapped at him before he left and …

…. she was hungry. She was starving and she was an idiot and she hoped Scout would remember to bring something back even if the idea of eating made her feel even worse, made the sensation of bile in her throat even sharper.

Her eyes still hurt.

She hoped Scout would come back.

 

* * *

 

Scout could keep time like anything. It took him exactly sixteen minutes and forty-eight seconds to figure out where the nearest fast-food place was, run there, order two to-go boxes, and sprint back, and most of that was waiting for the food. It was a damn good thing he had money on him.

The door seemed extra loud when he opened it. “Miss Pauling?” he called, nudging the door shut behind him as he stepped inside. No answer. He grimaced, hooked the little chain on the door into its slot, and looked around the corner.

Good, she hadn’t gone anywhere. Right in the same spot on the bed. Great. Where would she go, anyway? She couldn’t see. (Scout gave himself a rather vicious mental kick for that one.) “Hey,” he said carefully. “I, uh, I got sandwiches. An’, like, fries.”

“Did anyone follow you back?”

“No, I didn’t see nobody. They wouldn’t’a been able to keep up anyway.”

Miss Pauling said nothing.

 

* * *

 

The sun had gone down. Scout had been flipping through the same six channels on the television for two hours. And Miss Pauling had done absolutely nothing.

It was getting to the point where Scout was fidgeting, getting impatient. Doing a remarkably good job of not expressing it, he thought, but still. He’d managed to fill at least a few of those hours with sleep, which had been something. Scout wasn’t made for sitting around shitty motel rooms all day watching the one damn thing he thought he could protect seem to waste away by years over a matter of hours. (And he was hungry again. Miss Pauling had, at least, eaten part of her sandwich.)

“Hey, uh,” he said eventually, after the last decent TV station had given its sign-off for the night. “Miss Pauling?”

“Mm.”

“So, like …” He felt like he was prodding a wounded bear. “… is there, I mean, what’s the plan? You been—you been thinkin’ all day, you got any ideas?”

The length of the silence that followed made his skin crawl. And then Miss Pauling laughed.

“No. No, Scout, I don’t. I have no idea what to do.”

… This wasn’t good. This wasn’t right. Miss Pauling  _always_  had a plan. “Hey, but … no, hey, c’mon wait, let’s talk one out then. Heavy an’ Spy gotta be somewhere nearby, or maybe I can find somewhere with one’a them Aussie wireless phones, or a radio—”

“Then you do that,” Miss Pauling said darkly, rolling over so Scout could only see her back.

 

* * *

 

Midnight again. No more words had been exchanged. Miss Pauling had tried to sleep and failed viciously. Scout was, she thought, sleeping in what she guessed was a chair over beyond the far side of the bed. She could hear him shifting in something that creaked every now and then.

She was so tired. Everything was pitch dark, or very occasionally blurry, faded bursts of white or pale color would pop in on the edges. Was this really permanent? She’d held some hope that it would wear off. She was no chemist by any means, but she’d never heard of a powder that would blind so totally.

Practically, she wished the merc she had wound up with was Medic. Medic might be able to do something, even now. But another part of her, the silly foolish one that had long ago been charmed by a ridiculously boyish grin and the easy, effortless way that grin’s owner seemed to have gravity itself under his command—that one was glad it had been Scout. And ever since she had shut him down, that part had been getting louder and louder.

So: when a few minutes later she heard Scout heave a sigh, cross the room, and the click of the bathroom door shutting, she argued with herself for the whole two minutes he was in there. When he came back out, she had pushed herself upright. God, she felt disgusting, greasy. She hadn’t stayed in bed all day since she was ten. “Scout?”

The footsteps paused. A brief silence. “Yeah?”

Oh, God damn it. She pressed her thumb and forefinger against her eyes and saw sparks. She guessed that was better than nothing. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she said quietly. “I—I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before. The worst thing I’ve ever had happen to me was breaking my arm.”

Scout did not answer right away, which was in itself unusual. But then Pauling heard the footsteps again, and the mattress shifted, and someone was breathing beside her. “Aw, don’t worry about it,” Scout said. “I mean I ain’t—I don’t blame you none.”

“I haven’t done anything but sit here and feel sorry for myself all day—”

There—there was a warm pressure on her wrist. “Yeah, well, you got a pretty freakin’ good reason.” There was a pause. The pressure left. “Engie did ‘bout the same thing when all that happened with his hand. I mean—he went an’ built a damn metal one for it after, but… goddamn, that ain’t the same thing at all, don’t listen to me. But hey, look—wait, that, that’s not the word I meant—”

He was fumbling over a tide of words now, apologizing, just a constant presence of familiar noise; the late hour had hushed his voice, though they had no reason to be speaking softly. And it all fell away when Pauling reached out and, falteringly, found his arm in the dark. “It’s okay,” she said.

Her hand fell away as Scout raised his own, and it was hard not to jump when he pressed the backs of his fingers to her cheek. His hand twisted and he smoothed some of her hair out, and then the mattress jostled again as he scooted closer to her. “Can I, uh. Is there anythin’ I can do?”

God. She’d already spent one night indulging in weaknesses. Why the hell not. “Stay here?”

“I—I mean, yeah. Absolutely.”

The first thing Pauling thought when he hesitantly put his arm over her shoulders was that he was warm, almost impossibly so. An involuntary shiver dragged down her spine, and she felt him go still, and she took the opportunity to lean against him. He smelled like salt and sweat, not unpleasantly so; as his fingers squeezed her shoulder, Miss Pauling shut her eyes and let herself pretend things were not as dire as they seemed. When she pulled him down to the mattress next to her a few minutes later, burying her face in his chest and tangling her fingers in his shirt as he curled around her like a shield, they almost felt that way.

She was still long in falling asleep. He was so warm as to be uncomfortable, though she stayed right where she was, and limbs were uncomfortable things to lie on. But Scout kept still and stroked her hair, rubbed at the knots in her back, and right as she was dropping off she almost thought she could see his face again.

 

* * *

 

Sleep had taken her like a storm, rolling in silent and overwhelming. Miss Pauling awoke feeling cold, and like something was missing; she was alone. Like usual. She groaned and buried her head deeper under the blanket.

There was a noise. It was distant and constant and jumped in volume, now soft, now loud, and she wished it would shut up. It burrowed into the back of her waking mind and rooted her out of her half-consciousness. Frustrated, she pushed herself up with her hands and—stopped.

The first thing she noticed was Scout was hunched over what looked like radio handset, yammering urgently into it. It crackled and a familiar voice snapped something back in German. The second thing was that everything was blurry and she felt like she was wearing an eyepatch.

The third was that she could  _see._


End file.
